Entrada treinta y dos. “Europe” is more than a geographical notion but less than an answer

The years 1946-89 are thus coming to seem more and more like parenthesis. This does not mean that we are about to return to bad old ways. The past, having once happened, leaves a record and a memory, and that memory is one of the reasons why the things it recalls will not simply be repeated. But it is also true that people can forget to remember – or perhaps, forget to forget – and that as we move further away from 1945 the reasons why it seemed or important to build something different will be less pressing. That is why we must remind ourselves not just that real gains have been made, but that European community which helped to make then was a means, not an end.

If we look to European Union as a solution for everything, chanting “Europe” like a mantra, waving the banner of Europe in the fact of recalcitrant “nationalist” heretics and screaming “Adjure, adjure¡,” we shall wake up one day to find that far from solving the problems of our continent, the myth of “Europe” has become an impediment to our recognizing them. We shall discover that it has become little more than the politically correct way to paper over local difficulties, as though the mere invocation of promise of Europe could substitute for solving problems and crises that really affect the place. Few would wish to deny the ontological existence of Europe, so to speak. And there is a certain self fulfilling advantage in speaking of it as though it already existed in some stronger, collective sense – the wish can indeed assits in fathering the though and has gone some distance in doing so. But some things it cannot do, some problems it cannot address. “Europe” is more than a geographical notion but less than an answer.

"A GRAND ILLUSION? An essay on Europe. Tony Judt. 2011 New York University Press"